Top 10 Networking Stories Of 2015

2015 has been a very promising year for the networking world. In this article, we will focus on top networking stories of 2015.
1. Cisco got a new CEO
The networking giant Cisco got a new CEO in 2015. Chuck Robbins was appointed as the new CEO of the company. He took over the charge from John Chambers who spearheaded the growth of Cisco for two decades. John Chambers joined Cisco in 1995 as President and CEO when the company’s revenue was just $70 million. John Chambers steadily steered the company to new heights of profit and growth. At the end of his 20-year tenure, Cisco reported revenue of more than $49 billion for the fiscal year 2015.
2. Hewlett-Packard (HP) took over Aruba Networks
Another big story that swirled around in 2015 was the acquisition of Aruba Networks by Hewlett-Packard (HP). In March 2015, HP acquired Aruba Networks for $3 billion. Aruba Networks reported $724 million revenue before it was taken over by Hewlett-Packard. It was also an interesting year for Aruba channel partners who were hesitant to go hand-in-hand with Hewlett-Packard. Various HP competitor companies tried to establish new business links with Aruba channel partners.
3. White-Box Switches Garnered Immense Popularity
White-box switches was adopted by various companies across the globe in 2015. Market analysts said that companies have made notable improvements in their agility levels and also gained a monetary advantage when they decoupled their software with the existing hardware.
The market analysts also said that many big companies like HP, Dell and even Facebook have joined the white-box bandwagon. According to the reports released by Infonetics Research, bare-metal switches will make up nearly 25 percent of all data center ports shipped worldwide in 2019, an increase from just 11 percent in 2014.
4. Juniper came back strongly in 2015
The year 2015 was very healthy and profitable for Juniper.
This firm stormed the market with a slew of new and improvised solutions. In 2015, Juniper made its presence felt in both enterprise and service provider markets. In its third quarter of 2015, Juniper posted a very good figures, and captured 28 percent of routing market share in 2015, which was the highest market share for Juniper in last four years.
The year 2014 was not that good for Juniper partners and executives. But they came back strongly in 2015 with their new enterprise-focused products and partnerships. All in all, it has been a good year for Juniper.
5. SDN solutions got a massive reception in 2015
Cisco and VMware had a good year in 2015, as their Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solutions were widely adopted by the market in 2015. Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) got a huge reception in 2015. Many companies across the globe are planning to shift from traditional router-based WANs to SD-WANs. Market analysts suggested that SD-WAN’s are saving lots of money and moreover SD-WAN are also enhancing the agility levels of the organizations.
According to a recent report by Gartner, WAN carriers will increasingly incorporate SD-WAN capabilities into their enterprise-class service offerings, and by 2018, 10 percent of enterprises will have replaced their WAN routing with SD-WAN, up from less than 1 percent in 2015.
6. Cisco partnered with Apple and Ericsson
Cisco was in the news for more than one reason last year. First it was when they appointed a new CEO and second time it hit the headlines when it joined hands with another industry giant Apple. This new alliance flabbergasted the entire networking world, and in future, we can expect a close nexus between Apple devices and Cisco enterprise collaboration products.
Cisco also partnered with Ericsson in November last year. This partnership mainly focused on developing next generation service provider networks and new platforms and services targeting IoT.
7. Debate on net neutrality took the center stage
The debate on Net Neutrality was something which caught the attention of everyone. The debate was whether Internet Service Providers can charge higher rates for faster internet access. The debates continued between Federal Communications Commission and various telecom leaders and associations on whether all internet traffic should be treated equally and if Net neutrality encouraged innovation (also consider checking this perfect guide that will walk you through the cyber security certification).
8. Dell pitched in new products
Dell has made its intentions clear that it will crack the enterprise networking market, and is expected to swoop a good amount of market share giving a tough time to its competitors. Dell expanded its networking portfolio, by pitching in their products like Networking C9010 Network Direct switch as well as Dell's new S6100-ON fabric switch.
9. Router glitches led to chaotic situations
Router glitch created a panic situation for United Airlines company, and this technical snag forced the airline company to ground their entire flight fleet across the nation. The company officials in their press report stated that the flaw in the router degraded network for various applications. New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) also faced some technical problems, and because of this malfunction trading at NYSE was ceased for several hours. But, later the problem was fixed by the technical team. Well, if that wasn’t enough, then here’s another one. The Wall Street Journal had a 504 error message on its website for several hours, but later everything was rectified.
10. IoT got a boost in 2015
Internet of Things (IoT) was the buzzword in 2015. Many big IT companies like Google, IBM, Amazon Web Services, Cisco Systems and GE vowed to make pump in billions of dollars in this emerging technology (here's some resource to help you navigate through the types of cloud services). We have seen many IoT-based companies in 2015 and is expected these companies will yield higher revenues in 2016, because the demand for Internet of Things (IoT) is constantly going up.
Conclusion:
There were some highs and lows in networking world in 2015, but despite these glitches and technical slags, 2015 proved good for networking companies as they made new alliances and partnerships. We hope this will be the case in coming years as well.